Tech, Strategy, and other interesting things by Roberto Zoiaby Roberto Zoia
Great piece from John Grubber about Apple’s keynote in last week’s WWDC.
Among other things, he reflects about how Apple’s device-centric approach and owning platform, devices, and services allows them to compete with high-margin products in a commoditized industry, and offer a seamless experience across Apple their devices that is unparalleled in the industry.
It’s all about control.
Another interesting reflection he makes is how Apple is improving it’s internal operational efficiency.
Seth Godin, talking about the need of business to change their clients:
You can understand Apple Computer if you understand them as a company who wants to give their customers better taste.
Apple is organized around the idea that you show up, and after you leave, you can’t use their competition, because their competition seems tacky, because their competition doesn’t seem elegant, because their competition doesn’t seem as powerful.
They have changed you. They have changed your preception of typography. They have changed what it means to walk into a retail establishment. That change is what they do for a living.
(The Modern Marketing Workshop, the Action Theory of Marketing (Emotions, Change, Alert, Share).)
Asymco’s Horace Dediu commenting on The Globe and Mail’s article Inside the fall of Blackberry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt:
The iPhone was not a low-end disruption. It was exactly the opposite. The BlackBerry and the Nokia products were striving for the low end. They observed the discipline of constrained resources. They were expanding into emerging markets. They watched every fraction of a penny on the bill of materials. The low end was manna for the whole industry. Even Microsoft with Windows Mobile was better positioned for the low end than Apple.
Instead, what Apple did was unthinkable. It entered with a high end product. It even promoted its high price ($500, subsidized!) This is why it was laughed at.
Theirs was “the Mac in a phone” idea. The reason it worked was that it was not a phone. The reason it worked is because it was the hardest disruption to spot:
A new market disruption
Asymco’s Horace Dediu, quoting Apple’s CEO Tim Cook from three years ago:
We can put all of our products on the table you’re sitting at. Those products together sell $40 billion per year. No other company can make that claim except perhaps an oil company.
Revenues quadrupled since to a total of $170 billion for the last four quarters. The table, however, has not gotten bigger.
Ah, the power of the Press… Draw your own conclusions about objectivity and responsibility.
Foxconn’s factories in China assemble many Apple’s products, and Apple accounts to more than 50% of Foxconn’s revenues. On Feb 20, Financial Times{: target=’_blank’} reported that Foxconn had implemented a hiring freeze at its factories in China. Financial Times attributed the freeze to a slowdown in Apple’s iPhone 5 production. After the news release by FT, Apple’s stock price fell 2%.
On the other hand, RBC Capitals commenting on the same Foxconn’s hiring freeze, reflects that historically, 20%-30% of Chinese workers just leave their factory jobs after Chinese New Year, specially if the pay is low and working conditions are harsh. This year the return rate in Foxconn’s factories has been much higher, closer to 90%, which may explain the hiring freeze. (CNN Money’s Fortune adds: Could that have anything to do with the fact that Foxconn, pressured by Apple and local workers rights groups, has more than doubled wages and cut overtime hours?)
Are the iPhone sales slowing down? According to data gathered by Strategy Analytics, Apple overtook Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the last quarter of 2012 to become the world’s bestselling smartphone. In the same quarter, the iPhone 4s also overtook the Galaxy S3, so that for the first time, Apple has the world’s #1 and #2 bestselling smartphones.
| Smartphone Shipments (Million Units) | Q3 2012 | % | Q4 2012 | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple iPhone 5 | 6.0 | 3.5% | 27.4 | 12.6% |
| Apple iPhone 4s | 16.2 | 9.4% | 17.4 | 8.0% |
| Samsung Galaxy S3 | 18.0 | 10.4% | 15.4 | 7.1% |
| Others | 132.6 | 76.7% | 156.8 | 72.3% |
| TOTAL | 172.8 | 100.0% | 217.0 | 100.0% |
Data Source: Strategy Analytics, 2013-02-20